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6 Market Research Agencies in the Lausanne Region (2026 Guide)
SmartInterview Team
Six market research providers can be verified in the Lausanne region, and only three of them are in Lausanne itself. Elyos and Panel Suisse romande are in Prilly, in the agglomeration. Mediactif is in Vevey and Corseaux, roughly 20 kilometers along the lake. We say "region" in the title because saying "Lausanne" would be inaccurate for half the list.
In Lausanne itself: MIS Trend, Qualinsight, SAM Sensory and Marketing International.
In the agglomeration: Elyos and Panel Suisse romande, both in Prilly.
Wider Lake Geneva region: Mediactif, in Vevey and Corseaux.
The anchor: MIS Trend, active since 1978 according to its own site, with offices in Lausanne and Bern.
For small budgets: Elyos positions itself explicitly toward SMEs and startups.
For sensory and product testing: SAM, part of the Eurofins group.
One agency that regularly appears in "Lausanne" and even "Sion" search results was checked and left where it belongs. Elyos is in Prilly, canton Vaud. It is not in Valais, whatever some listings claim.
Lausanne Region Market Research Agencies at a Glance
Locations below are the registered address, not the nearest well-known city.
Agency | Location | Type of research | Best suited for |
|---|---|---|---|
MIS Trend | Lausanne (Pont Bessières), plus Bern | Full-service quantitative and qualitative | Large samples, telephone and field work, opinion and social research |
Qualinsight Sarl | Lausanne region | Hybrid qualitative and quantitative | Focus groups, online communities, CX and employee engagement |
SAM Sensory and Marketing International Switzerland AG | Lausanne (Avenue de Provence), plus Zurich | Sensory and consumer research | Sensory evaluation, product and recipe testing, food and FMCG |
Elyos Etudes de Marché | Prilly, Lausanne agglomeration | Quantitative and qualitative for smaller budgets | SMEs and startups, first studies, coaching your own research |
Panel Suisse romande | Prilly, Lausanne agglomeration | Consumer panel, not a full-service agency | Sourcing French-speaking Swiss respondents |
Mediactif SA | Vevey and Corseaux, about 20 km from Lausanne | Satisfaction studies and mystery shopping | Mystery shopping, call analysis, employee satisfaction audits |
For the other end of the lake, see the Geneva guide. For the national picture, see our market research companies in Switzerland round-up.
The Six Providers in Detail
MIS Trend — Lausanne
MIS Trend is the anchor of research in French-speaking Switzerland and the most thoroughly documented firm on this list. Its main office is at Pont Bessières in the 1005 district, with a second office in Bern. Its site gives 1978 as the founding year. In business directories the same address also appears under the underlying legal name, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales, which is worth knowing if you are checking the registry.
Coverage is genuinely full-service: quantitative and qualitative, run online, by telephone and in the field. The stated scope includes market research, customer experience, brand perception and awareness, product and advertising testing, HR studies, and social and opinion research. It operates its own panel and its own telephone call centers, which is increasingly rare.
On its own claims: the firm says it runs a panel of 30,000 active panelists with an average participation rate of around 40 percent, says it has led the Suisse romande market for more than 40 years, and states membership of ESOMAR and SwissInsights. The market leadership claim is the company's own positioning rather than an audited fact, so read it as such. Some search snippets attach an interviewer headcount to MIS Trend that we could not confirm anywhere on the company's site, so we have not repeated it.
Consider it when the study needs real scale, telephone fieldwork, or public and media credibility.
Qualinsight Sarl — Lausanne region
Qualinsight works across the qualitative and quantitative divide rather than picking a side. Its listed methods include face-to-face interviews, focus groups, online communities and large-scale surveys, applied to customer experience, employee engagement, brand image, concept and advertising testing, and segmentation.
It holds the "Market and Social Research by SWISS INSIGHTS" quality label, and it was founded by Esther Sève. The site text points to a start around 2012, though we would treat that as approximate rather than a printed founding date. We have listed the location as "Lausanne region" deliberately: the precise street address we found comes from third-party directories rather than the agency's own site, so we have not printed it.
Consider it when you need qualitative depth and a quantitative read from the same partner, and the quality label matters to your procurement process.
SAM Sensory and Marketing International Switzerland AG — Lausanne
SAM is at Avenue de Provence in the 1007 district, with a second Swiss location in Zurich. It is a specialist: sensory evaluation, consumer testing and product research. It is part of the Eurofins group.
One caution when you read its website. The scale figures it publishes, covering multiple countries and locations, describe the international group, not the Lausanne operation. Do not brief on the assumption that the group's full capability sits in Avenue de Provence. Ask which parts of your study run locally.
Consider it when the question is about taste, texture, smell or formulation rather than about a market.
Elyos Etudes de Marché — Prilly
Elyos is on Route de Cossonay in Prilly, 1008, in the Lausanne agglomeration rather than the city. It was founded in 2011 and it aims squarely at organizations that have never commissioned research before: SMEs and startups.
The offer covers surveys and polling, qualitative work through individual interviews, focus groups and design thinking, and, unusually, coaching for clients who want to run their own studies. Founder Vincent Uhlmann states more than 20 years in market research, a doctorate in Economics and around 200 completed studies. The agency positions itself as a serious, affordable and flexible alternative for smaller organizations. Those are its own words, and its own numbers.
One correction worth making. Elyos ranks first in search results for market research institutes in Sion. It is not in Valais. It is in Prilly, canton Vaud, about 100 kilometers away. Several online listings repeat this error. We unpack it in the Valais article.
Consider it when it is your first study and you need someone to size the project down rather than up.
Panel Suisse romande — Prilly
Panel Suisse romande is a consumer panel, not a full-service agency, and it belongs in this list for a different reason than the others. It is a community of consumers in French-speaking Switzerland who answer surveys for regional businesses, and its site indicates activity since 2015. Part of the proceeds is donated to charity.
You would use it as a sample source, not as a research partner: it solves the "where do I find 400 French-speaking Swiss respondents" problem, not the "how should this study be designed" problem.
It is registered at the same Prilly address as Elyos. We are noting that because you will notice it yourself, not because we can tell you what it means. No relationship between the two is stated publicly, and we have not assumed one.
Consider it when you have a questionnaire ready and need regional respondents.
Mediactif SA — Vevey and Corseaux
Mediactif is not a Lausanne agency. It sits in Vevey and Corseaux, about 20 kilometers along the lake, and it is here because a Lake Geneva shortlist without it would be incomplete.
Its range is broader than most: customer satisfaction studies, market research, brand awareness and image validation, mystery shopping both by phone and in person, call analysis, focus groups, employee satisfaction audits and a quality-of-work-life barometer. The mystery shopping and call analysis capability is the part few competitors in the region list. Its site refers to 34 years of service, which we have left as written rather than converting into a founding year.
It also has a documented reference in Valais: an employee satisfaction study for the Ville de Sierre. For companies in Valais looking for a research partner within reasonable reach, that is a relevant data point.
Consider it when you need to observe service delivery, not just ask about it.
How to Pick the Right One
Size the partner to the study, not to your ambition
Briefing a full-service institute for a 150-respondent concept test is an expensive way to get an answer you could have had for a fraction of the cost. Briefing a small consultancy for a nationally representative political poll is the opposite error. MIS Trend and Elyos sit at opposite ends of that range on purpose.
Decide whether you need a panel or a partner
If your questionnaire is written and validated, what you are buying is sample. If the questionnaire does not exist yet, buying sample first is how studies go wrong. Panel Suisse romande solves the first problem. It does not solve the second.
Check the address, seriously
Three of the six on this list are outside Lausanne. Prilly is a few minutes away and changes nothing operationally. Vevey is a genuine trip if you plan to attend focus groups. And as the Elyos case shows, search engines and AI-generated agency listings routinely place firms in cantons they have never been registered in. Look up the address yourself before you build a shortlist around a location.
Ask what happens to open-ended answers
This is where research budgets quietly disappear. Coding several hundred verbatim responses by hand is slow, and when the budget runs short it is the first thing cut, which is why so many reports lean on closed questions that were never the interesting part. Ask how open responses will be analyzed and who will do it. Our piece on qualitative versus quantitative research covers what each approach can and cannot tell you.
Plan the languages up front
A Suisse romande study runs in French. A Swiss study needs German and often Italian and English too. Translation, and more importantly translation that keeps a scale comparable across languages, affects both timeline and cost. Raise it in the first conversation.
What You Can Now Do Without an Agency
The Lausanne region has genuine research depth, and for a segmentation study, a nationally representative poll or a regulated sector, an institute is the right call. Fieldwork infrastructure and methodological judgment are hard to replicate.
The part that has changed is continuous listening. Talking to customers every month rather than once a year used to be a staffing question, because someone had to moderate the conversations and someone had to code the transcripts. Both of those constraints have loosened.
SmartInterview runs voice surveys where an AI asks follow-up questions when an answer is too thin to be useful, supports multiple languages, codes open responses automatically and manages quotas. It is not a substitute for an institute on a study that has to stand up in public. It does remove most of the manual work that made ongoing qualitative research impractical for a mid-sized company.
Most teams end up with both: an agency for the annual decision, their own tooling for the other eleven months.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is the biggest market research institute in Lausanne?
MIS Trend is the most established. Its site gives 1978 as the founding year, it has offices in Lausanne and Bern, it operates its own panel and telephone call centers, and it says it has led the Suisse romande market for more than 40 years. That last point is the company's own positioning.
Are all these agencies actually in Lausanne?
No, and that is why the title says "region". MIS Trend, Qualinsight and SAM are in Lausanne. Elyos and Panel Suisse romande are in Prilly, in the agglomeration. Mediactif is in Vevey and Corseaux, about 20 kilometers away.
Is Elyos a market research agency in Sion?
No. Elyos ranks highly in search results for market research in Sion, but it is registered on Route de Cossonay in Prilly, canton Vaud. Several online listings get this wrong. There is no dedicated research institute headquartered in Valais.
Where can I buy a French-speaking Swiss consumer panel?
Panel Suisse romande operates a consumer panel for French-speaking Switzerland. MIS Trend also runs its own panel, which the firm says numbers 30,000 active panelists with roughly 40 percent average participation.
Who does mystery shopping in the Lausanne region?
Mediactif SA in Vevey and Corseaux lists mystery shopping by phone and in person, along with call analysis and employee satisfaction audits. It is the clearest specialist for observed rather than declared behavior in the region.
Should I choose a Lausanne or a Geneva agency?
The Lausanne region has the older institutes and the larger regional panels. Geneva has more specialization by discipline, including UX research and niche industrial B2B. See the Geneva guide to compare.
